


Kiddie, Wafer, Mint

by deltacrow



Category: MCU, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU, and the khans will own a middle-eastern restaurant down the block, but no just ice cream for now, honorable mention of so many characters, i mean theres a book store and an ice cream parlour and a dry cleaners and everything, ice cream parlour au, next thing you know pietro is a clerk at the us post office, thats not the worst idea ive had all week, this could also be a small town AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 05:57:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1971492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltacrow/pseuds/deltacrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The food service AU that's not, actually, a coffee shop AU.<br/>(But if you order coffee, they'll give it to you. It's on the menu! Honest!)</p><p><i>This is it,</i> Natasha thinks, <i>I'll give them a scoop-- a scoop of their own throat. Sugar or wafer cone?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. this end open: the bar and candy shelves

**Author's Note:**

> In this chapter:
> 
> We find out who works at SHIELD. We also get a basic layout going.  
> Forewarning: Tony does make insensitive dumbs. Basically: someone has a lactose problem, ice cream has dairy, why buy ice cream, he asks? Answer: a) because sherbets and sorbets exist, b) because ice cream is delicious, and, as Natasha put it, c) because Tony sucks horse dicks.  
> I-- didn't know if someone might find that comment offensive or ableist? Whatever. That's in the first section, so you could skip that if you'd like?

Rain rolls down over an awning. It is, in fact, a miserable Tuesday in March, and there is _still_ a steady stream of customers coming in, jackets hung on their heads, for ice cream. Natasha wants to scream. Instead, she wipes her hands on her apron, facets a charming smile onto her face, and asks the (extended!) family of eight (eight!!) what they'd like to order.

 

"My youngest has a peanut allergy," the father confides. "And my niece has a dairy allergy."

 

"We have Orange and Strawberry Sorbet, which are non-dairy, and we can wash the scoop before we use it." Jesus Christ, hurry up and order.

 

"Alright," he responds, mollified, and he turns to his mother and proceeds to get into a heated debate over cookie dough, cookies and cream, or coffee. _This is it,_ Natasha thinks, _I'll give them a scoop-- a scoop of their own throat. Sugar or wafer cone?_

 

(She does not, in fact, scoop out this man's larynx, nor the larynx of any of his party members. What she does is signal to Clint-- ever watchful-- for two kiddie cones, three regulars, and a root beer float, nut allergy and lactose intolerance. He rolls his eyes, and gives her a thumbs up.

 

Tony, across the aisle at the candy register, signs back, _why the fuck are they buying ice cream if they have a lactose problem?_

_Because you suck horse dick,_ she signs back. He turns around and buries his face in the pen bucket to hide his snickering.)

 

The group comes to a decision-- Root beer float, two kiddie cones-- one regular strawberry, one orange sherbet-- and three regular cones-- one raspberry chocolate chip, one chocolate chip mint, and one of Steve's special flavours, called Eve With a Lid. It's apple pie flavoured, and apparently delicious.

 

Pssh. What amateurs. Natasha could have told them that five minutes ago. She rings up their orders, and gets Thor working on the float, and signs the rest of the order to Clint. He gets Tony over, and they dish out their orders.

 

Nicholas Fury, the proprietor of _this fucking forties-themed piss dump_ , watches his charges over his crossword puzzle from the last booth in back.

\--- ---

 

SHIELD-- Scrumptious Homemade Ice-Cream Emporium & Local Dainties-- has been in business since the 1920s. Owned by the Phillips family and sold to the Carter family in 1955, this ice cream parlour and confectionery have had three major renovations: the first before it went in to business, to make it an ice cream parlour; the second to update everything but the superficial details in 1957; the third to convert the old apartment above the storefront into a makeshift warehouse and add more candy-making space beyond that.

 

A bell rings once a customer-- or, in the case of the party of eight, customers-- walks in, door wheezing shut. Blocking the immediate space beyond the ice cream counter is the soft-serve machine, and blocking the space beyond the opposing candy display shelving units is the open second door. If one looked closely at the door that closed behind them-- not that anyone does or has time to-- they'd notice knobs on the plastic windows. The staff will get to that later.

 

\--- ---

 

"I just spent _six hours_ making _25 tubs of ice cream_ ," Steve moans, head banging against the counter top. The plastic-y cushion on the bar stool crinkles as he pivots, to and fro, on it. " _I hate my life so much right now._ "

 Tony absently pats his back and stares as Clint signals for his attention and signs rapidly.

"Clint wants to know if you made-- what? Why the fuck would Steve make people?" Tony wrinkles his nose in distaste, and does a double take, as if he believed that Steve would suddenly be having sex over the freezers downstairs. No such luck. "Is there something you'd like to share with the class?"

 

"Diner lingo," Steve replies, head lifting from the counter. "'Eve with a lid' is diner lingo for apple pie. And yes, there's more pie flavours."

 

Clint makes a warbling sound, and grabs three metal milkshake spoons. Natasha holds out her hand for one, and Sam-- sneaky fucker, his tan jumpsuit looking polished against everyone elses' milkshake-speckled aprons-- has one thrust in his direction. Nobody seemed to have noticed the bell ringing but Natasha, or seen him come in except Clint. (His 'aids shitted out last Thursday, and this job is specifically what pays for them and their upkeep.)

 

"Thanks, dude," Sam says. A clipboard gets passed to Steve, who sighs, tromps to the back of the store, and calls for Phil.

 

The stomping only incenses Thor, who's still downstairs. Thumping club music reverberates through the tiles in retaliation, because only Thor likes that sort of thing. (They don't force him to turn it off, though, because while he and Steve are the only ones that can lift three and four tubs of ice cream at a time, Thor is also a people-person. But when you dole out too much ice cream per serving and manage to break three scoops in as many months, you tend to stop being trusted with more delicate things. No, Thor, Julia Childs is not your role model right now--life is less short than you claim, dessert isn't a meal-- and traditional Viking portion sizes are not normal people portions.)

 

Phil glides downstairs. Literally, there is a lift on the stairs to help bring heavy things up and down the stairs, and he sits on the platform and descends on it. There is still a trail of confectioner's sugar left in his wake. He hands back the pad, and asks Sam to wait while he grabs some boxes from upstairs. "Don't walk away with my pen, you asshole," Sam calls after him. (The pen's a lost cause. Everyone knows it.)

 

Clint slides a dish of ice cream down the counter, coming to a complete stop primly before Sam. By rote, now, he sits down, and digs his spoon in.

 

"Aww, yeah," he crows, "you saved me some s'moreo!"

\--- ---

From now on, the parlour is divided into roughly four sections, each with its own subsection: the bar, the shelves, the booths, and the void.

 

The bar is a laminated plastic-- like grade school tables, minus the stuck-on glue and the pen-carvings-- with cushioned bar stools bolted into the floor in the aisle. To get to the working stations, one would either have to jump over the bar, or hit the end of the bar and shelf area and swing right. From the end of the bar-- because OSHA and Fury don't approve of hardcore parkour indoors-- you travel forwards towards the door, passing the back freezer, the sinks, and the front freezer, which are all on your right, by the way. Everything else is on the left, except metal spoons, and including the mirrors. The mirrors help mask the fact that there is maybe three feet of space between the workstations and the wall. If you wished to travel further than the soft-serve machine, you would fall into the outside display cases, cause a scene, and probably get sacked. (Sorry.)

 

The shelves are literally just that. There are a few, from the bottom up, that have glass keeping children from grabbing at the nicer, larger, more expensive pieces. As you go up and, presumably reach the eyesight of more socialized individuals, there is less and less protection for anything on display. There's a cash register and a machine that reads credit cards. Not much to see there.

...Well, there is a 36-inch Easter Bunny (or turkey, or Santa) during the holidays. And there's always the solid dark chocolate Louboutins.

\--- ---


	2. the booths and the void: the truth is out there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The booths and void are explored.  
> Sorry for the wait! Especially sorry to you, missbuster, because you're so excited for this!  
> Clint has hearing aids from here on out.

"This is SHIELD, Tony speaking, how may I help you?"

 

_"Are you still open?"_

 

Tony sighs to himself-- he's answered this question maybe 13 times today. It's like nobody thinks to go online anymore.

 

"The inside is open from noon to five. After that, our walk-up window is open until eleven."

 

_"But you're still open?"_

 

"I-- yes. Yes we are."

The line goes dead. Well. Number thirteen and counting. Tony ticks it off on the Are You Open whiteboard Nick had installed after that TV spot--hell yeah, Martha Steward is good for more than just insider trading and getting fabulously wealthy without it. The guy that owns the dry cleaners form down the street, Jasper, is looking maudlin while hitting the dregs of his raspberry chip milkshake, while Maria and Sharon-- the only other employees at Sir Sitwell's Cleaners-- are bickering over the last banana piece in the banana split they, well, split.

 

Jasper always knows how to overstay his welcome-- normally, he buys something and doesn't spill shit everywhere on the booths. Every once in a while, when he does spill shit, he just grabs the Windex from the cabinet under the Hulk, and mops anything up himself. Fury watches him with one eye, and calls him a "fucking sweetheart, Jasper, now get your ass out of here, you're disrupting business" when he's finished. To be a dick, he stays 20 more minutes, drags Phil down for something asinine, and then leaves alternatively from the front or back door. He claims it's good life training. Sharon just likes to be annoying. (Valentine's day, last year, she just _had_ to climb out the second-story window. Then again, admirers _had_ staked out the front and back entrances. They were startled from their places when Natasha stood but the screen door, glaring and cleaning the over sized fruit knives with a paper towel.)

\--- ---

If one drags their children past the bar stools and candy successfully-- oftentimes they don't make it past the dummy register, named Hulk, lovingly, after its enormous size and weight and its impossibility to move-- they hit the booths. The one immediately on their left, shoved up near the sugar-free chocolates display and occasional free-samples, is the booth that Fury takes up. There are newspapers scattered everywhere, and normally a glass of water in different states of filled next to a pair of glasses that, frankly, no one has ever seen him use. There's another booth behind that, two tables pushed together, and another two booths against the right wall. Both walls, in case anyone was wondering, had mirrors from the ceiling down to about the tops of the booth seats, to fascinate small children; help you people watch or stalk other patrons; or create feelings of disconcert, only to find out that its the fun-house effect of seeing the front and back of your head, endlessly reflected, at the same time.

 

Behind that is the void.

\--- ---

 

"I need two of you motherfuckers to stop whatever the hell you're not being paid to do," Fury remarks to the group of employees play Cards Against Humanity at-- okay, it is 10:30 on a Tuesday night, but the point remains that he _wasn't invited_ \-- "and tie a bunch of fucking ribbons on these lollipops."

 

Clint sighs and lays down his cards-- Tony must have brought the Box edition, because Fury can see one of his options being "a person-shaped box", and he's feeling a little mollified now, because he hates the expansion packs. Thor also sighs and tosses his cards onto the table, and drags his chair back to the free-floating table and throws himself into twist-tying pink ribbons onto chocolate crucifix lollipops.

 

"I need these on my desk at closing."

 

Clint-- new hearing aids, hooray for minimum wage paychecks-- splutters, "There's no room on your desk! There's no room in the office, let alone on your desk!"

 

"Can't hear you bitch, Barton," Fury yells, jingling his keys, "over the sound of me going home before you." He's strode past the office, down to the warehouse floor stairs, and out the back door before anyone can lodge anymore complaints. He starts up his car, and hums to himself as he drives out of the employee parking lot.

 

Inside, Clint and Thor twist-tie lollipops and make passing remarks about the few renegade customers that swing by the window before closing.

\--- ---

 

If one had managed to slip past someone's radar-- of needed to go to the bathroom, but really, who uses that-- they would find themself in the void. Immediately to their left, a customer would find the drying rack for empty ice cream tubs, maybe about as tall as their forearm, give or take the length of their hand. (Clint gives the hand room, because he's compact as heck. Thor takes the hand room, because his body was built to upset the balance between mortals and the gods themselves-- meaning, of course, that he is the jovial example of perfection that one finds only in Renaissance sculpture.)

 

Past the drying rack is the backup upstairs fridge. There are magnets all over, that a casual observer would look at and ignore, because there's _too many magnets_ and they _must_ have something to do with ice cream, okay? Okay. It's a backup freezer.

 

Past that is the office. Once, as Phil picked up his paycheck, he realized that Fury sucked ass at figuring expenses. Well, he says that because he's in college for finance, but to laymen, Nicholas J. Fury was just slow at finishing them. This was unacceptable to Phil, so now he has a raise and can sometimes be seen sitting at the computer back there, typing up spreadsheets and getting confectioner's sugar everywhere but the keyboards. Because he's not a _godless heathen_ , he washes his hands before using computers.

 

Anyway. The entire thing is just metal racks with tarps blocking it off from the outside world, and one solid corner of appliances. This corner consists of two fridges along the actual wall, and a display case of out-of-season candies, like those chocolate rabbits and cornucopias with wrapped candies molded into the solid chocolate and nonpareil monstrosity. (Thor and Steve spend a lot of time wondering if the price of those chocolate masterpieces is worth it. Steve spends more time wondering if it would actually get eaten, or if he'd try to shrink-wrap it first to preserve its posterity.)

The fridge closest to the display case is mostly for fruit and employee lunches, but it is interesting to note both the contents of and on the pull-out freezer. In it is mostly ice cubes for drinks and smaller things that need to stay frozen, so it does actually hold work-things. On the freezer are printouts with security photos of people who are banned for life and why. (This person called the staff "retarded", this person stole her ice cream. There are only two.)

 

The second freezer has refills for the soft-serve machine, syrup refills, milk, cream, half-and-half-- it's ostensibly a work-fridge.

 

Backing out of the office and moving towards the back brings you to two doors on the left and one door on the right. Closest to the back is the stairs up to the warehouse floor and candy-making room, and closest to the front is the stairs down to the basement, where ice cream is made.

 

The door on the right is the bathroom. The doorknob has been broken for years, so they installed a hook-and-eye lock on the inside and left the broken doorknob in. The bathroom is literally the size of two aggressively straight grown men trying to be as close as possible while maintaining a "no homo" zone. Do not spend more time than necessary here, or risk developing claustrophobia. The void itself is very much a claustrophobia hazard, really.

\--- ---


	3. a series of vingettes, and the fabled watermelon sorbet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, Thor and Clint talk relationships; watermelon sorbet is had; cameo by young avengers; Steve contemplates Fury, and Thor basically tells him to drop it, please Steve, for your own sanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so, so late; to be honest, I had everything but the last one finished, and then I just couldn't figure out how to keep going.
> 
> This will probably be my last update here until next spring; I haven't been at my ice cream store since August, what with moving away to college, but come spring, I'll have, at the very least, visited again. Something will happen, I'll write a thing, life will go on.
> 
> In the meantime, find me on tumblr-- gogogadget-im-going-gogoat-- and, I don't know, drop in for a visit!

It's twenty to closing time. Tony, Clint, and Thor are milling around the bar area-- Thor, draped on two bar stools, his legs dangling; Clint, upright with Thor's head in his lap; Tony, leaning across the bar, absently grabbing a spoon from its stand and opening up a freezer.

 

"What are you even _doing,_ man?" Clint absently pets Thor's hair. Hey. It's long, it's there, and Thor enjoys it as much as the one-eyed retriever from up the block does. "You know we're shit at relationships."

 

"Rude," Tony remarks around a spoonful of Cantaloupe ice cream. "Mhm, better than I expected." He throws the spoon into the sink, to be washed later.

"Honestly? I was hoping for examples of what not to do," Thor replies.

 

"For that, _you're_ doing dishes,  you ungrateful shit!"

 

"He's got a point. You and Pepper lasted, what, three months?"

 

"Puh-lease. I remember when you and _Bobbi Morse_ got _married_ in kindergarten!"

 

Clint gets up so violently, Thor loses balance and almost faceplants on the floor. He supposes that it was a good thing they mopped an hour ago, and then wonders where he was when Clint got married. "When was this? I don't remember this!" He now wonders where Clint was when he got married. Well, Thor muses, that's probably why it didn't last.

 

"I'm hurt; I was your best man! Bruce Banner officiated!"

 

Thor escapes to the basement as Clint screeches, " _that's not legally binding!_ "

\--- ---

 

"Wait, what the hell? Why does this freezer smell like Jolly Ranchers?"

 

Clint glances at Natasha, who has a look on her face that suggests that she is trying to commit the face of the person in front of her to memory, if only to choke him with one of the dishcloths when no one's looking. "Steve decided we needed more watermelon-flavored things in life." She throws a glare in his direction and demands to know if he's even read the specials board outside. Like she doesn't know the answer to that one.

 

But hey, watermelon sorbet is a thing he can get behind. Trust Steve to have a good idea about wholesome Americana.

 

Three hours later, when the doors have closed and people forget that they can line up outside for two hours, Clint can safely say that Watermelon Sorbet was a fucking _atrocious_ idea. God _dammit_ , basement team, your road to ice cream hell is paved with a lot of melting, sticky failures. Like that plum shit, what the hell was up with making cough syrup ice cream? It sold, _sort of_ , but it was still trash, in Clint's opinion.

 

"Nat," he says, face puckered, "please tell me you didn't like this monstrosity." When she pushes past him and makes a beeline to the void, he calls out, frantically, "It has _pulp_ and _seeds_ in it! Nat-- _Nat!_ "

\--- ---

 

It's the middle of summer. School is out, and children are forced either to lock themselves inside and read for school the next autumn or to go outside for fresh air. Normally, Natasha hates children. They're sticky and gross and smell bad. These kids, however, are adorable.

 

Billy and Teddy are hugging plastic sleeves to their chests-- their pre-orders must have come in from Xavier's Book Shop down the block (It's been owned owned run by Hank McCoy since its inception; where "Xavier" came from, nobody knows. Maybe he got a better deal on X that he could have gotten on C.) and Billy's yelling down the counter at Eli about-- something, Natasha's not entirely sure. They're engrossed in it, though, pausing only to briefly glare at Tommy when he launches a gummy bear at either of their faces. Kate's watching Clint with an air of disapproval-- he's practically her little brother, for all that she's twelve and he's a freshman in college-- as he splutters over the seltzer fountain.

 

"You pushed it back too far _again,_ doofus," she admonishes. "How long have you had this job?"

 

"Katie-- wait a minute, I don't have to answer to you!"

 

She's levels him with an _is that what you really think, because you're wrong_ look, and turns to Natasha. She just shakes her head, minutely, which is meant to mean _he really does think that and, it's a shame how delusional he is._ It's more or less received that way.

 

"Here," he grumbles, "is your dang egg creme."

 

"Thank you, geez."

 

"Bye, Tasha," Eli calls. "Thanks for your copy of _Pride and Prejudice_. I'm still not an Austen fan, but your notes on the side were interesting."

 

Natasha is their favorite. Somehow, she's wiggled her way into being most people's favorite.

\--- ---

  
  


Steve has no idea how this has happened. He literally just wanted to bring up some ice cream.

“Uhm. Hello.”

The woman turns on her bar stool. She’s aged gracefully, for all that Steve can tell; white hair drawn back into a ponytail placing her beyond 60, to him, but a distinct lack of baggy skin shoots her below the estimate of 80, 85. She smiles, and beckons him over to her with a euphoric, “Steven, I haven’t seen you in _ages,_ darling!” and the crook of a finger.

 

This is unsurprising-- Steve understands that he has this effect on people. Most of the girls just entering high school have made it a point, shyly, to jot down their phone numbers onto store napkins and plead that they get passed along to Steve. Most of the older women enjoy inquiring about Steve, in the creepy way you’d ask after people you’d only tangentially know-- like a hairdresser’s daughter, or the cashier’s brother-in-law. Or your server’s, quote, “handsome, gentlemanly” co-worker.

 

There is a _reason_ Steve works in the basement.

 

“Hmm, I suppose you don’t remember me,” she says, steamrolling over whatever would have come out of Steve’s mouth. “To be fair, I haven’t stopped by since 2004.” She looks fond as she pats his hair, claiming to remember him as a beanpole-- something Steve’s almost managed to forget-- and then it clicks.

 

“Aunt Peggy?” Woah, talk about a blast from the past. Explains why she’s inside past closing time.

 

"I was visiting Marcus, dear. Never expected to see you here, though," she mused. "You were so small, back then-- did you ever manage to shake that cough?"

 

"That-- that's been _years!_ " Steve is turning an interesting shade of red, mostly because he had an asthma attack in the middle of a loud, _embarrassing_ declaration that he would become the first otter astronaut, or marry Aunt Peggy. It took weeks to live down the attack, and years until he managed to scare the tar out of the kids that wouldn't let him live down the otter comment.

 

This is also exactly when Fury swoops in, scowling, until his singular eye locks onto Aunt Peggy. There's conflicting cries of "Maggie," and "Marcus!" and somehow Steve backs up and watches as his adoptive aunt is received in a hug, picked up, and swung around carefully.

 

Steve swallows his pride and his confusion and stutters, "I-- I thought your name was Nick?"

Fury glares at him from over Aunt Peggy's shoulder. "I have lots of names, kid," he replies. He turns back to her and smiles gruffly. "Haven't seen you in years."

 

"As I recall, it was the last time you saw with both eyes, too," she replies, amused. "When did you change your name?"

 

"About the same time I got the glass eye." He shoos Steve absentmindedly.  Steve hesitates, and then remembers who controls his paycheck, before descending to the basement again. A hushed conversation follows him down the stairs.

 

Thor was sitting on the freezer, waiting for the cocoa mocha to finish churning and playing a level of Candy Crush. (Nobody’s hand-churned ice cream in forever here. Sorry.) Steve shakes his head, and sits next to Thor on the industrial freezer. “I’m not sure how much I want to know how aunt Peggy and Nick know each other.”

 

Thor looks at him, askance, before his expression cleared up; he pats Steve’s knee, and tell him, “there are many things that we should only think of knowing,” before turning back to his phone. Steve guesses that Thor should know; his dad, Odin, is a state representative, and there’s probably been a lot of weird things happening in his house.

  
Still. He wonders.


	4. the honorable spring mention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> natasha and phil make candy; steve is shot down as the paragon of virtue in eli bradley's eyes.

Natasha walks in through the front door and shucks her coat almost immediately. It’s the beginning of March and there’s snow clinging to her boots and her coat like limpets. She trails her coat behind her, getting water all over the small area rug in front and the linoleum tiles of the store front, intent on hanging it up and making the water someone else’s problem.

There’s candy _everywhere_. Normally, she would take about 5 minutes to see if there’s anything new: she’s got to satisfy professional curiosity—she has to sell this, after all—and personal curiosity—because it’s chocolate and delicious—but right now, she wants to grab and apron and pass out on the floor.

“Don’t drag your coat,” Phil admonishes her. “I’ll make you mop the floor with it, and it’s a nice coat.”

Natasha double-takes. Phil is behind the massive display case, set up on a large card-table in the Void. He has three jelly-roll pans and two bowls in front of him, and his hand looks like he took up finger painting and forgot the finger part. She gathers her jacket into her hands, heads for the basement, and wonders why Phil is in the Void instead of doing whatever he does from wherever he does it. To be frank, she’s not entirely sure what he does all day and every day. It’s a source of consternation for Natasha, because she’s a journalism major and makes it her business to know exactly what people do both in an official capacity and behind closed doors. Whatever happens, she has no idea, but it looked like he was rolling cranberries in chocolate.

 

“Go,” Phil waves his sticky, chocolate coated hand in her direction. “Wash your hands and join my contingent.”

“Do I _want_ to join your contingent?” Natasha disdains sticky hands. Sticky fingers aren’t the worst because at least theft is a skill, but sticky _hands_ are another thing entirely. Phil, still focused on his work, seems disinterested enough to not mind if Natasha goes off to man the counter. Phil plays a dangerous game, because if she judges this right, she could walk away to play on her phone with almost no cares.

 

 

He wins in the end. Damn him, the sneaky bastard. She grabs a pair of latex-free gloves and snaps them on her hands, trying to feel as imposing as possible in the face of mild-mannered Phil conscripting her for war. She fails, mostly because less than twenty minutes later she’s somehow roped Steve into cashiering (Clint has the day off and Thor and Tony are on vacation, presumably to somewhere warm, the bastards). It’s a slow day, because nobody really wants to head out in such miserable weather, and it only really starts to clear up when it starts getting dark out. Steve offers to take out the trash—“it’s not too much, Phil, please; Nat, don’t you dare, I’ve been doing nothing all day and need to feel useful—” so Phil and Natasha roll up their gloves and throw them out, and while Steve wrangles a large conglomerate of trash out the back door to the dumpster, Natasha heads to the front to collect their meager tips and to count profits for the day. Eli is waiting, purchases in one hand and book in the other.

“I never got around to reading _Little Women_ ,” he confesses, and Natasha is just surprised he picked it up in the first place, to be honest. He places his candy on the counter—two chocolate lollipops and a small bag of pastel candy corn for his grandmother—and they make small talk about the book and, oddly, about his neighbor’s dogs.

“—so they decided to get another dog, but they still haven’t sold those puppies and there’s Frank to consider, so we told them, fuck it, just _sell him,_ ” he stresses. “I mean, the apartment’s too small for a collie, they need so much space; and who’d be heartless enough to keep him there?”

Steve chooses this moment to bang the screen door closed behind him and carelessly call out, “oh my God, it’s blacker than my _soul_ out there!” He strides to the front of the store, and calls out a greeting to Eli, who looks _mortified_ , before taking off his apron, and leaving to hang it up at the top of the basement steps. Natasha is able to hold in her laughter until Steve is safely out of the store, before she bursts into laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing Steve said? Direct quote, me, circa summer 2014. Someone was schmoozing with their boyfriend, whose dog- loving neighbors had stopped by earlier. They were talking about selling some puppies-- they admitted to having no room in their house-- and the boyfriend scoffs, "what kind of _satan worshipper_ sells _puppies_?" when i come in from throwing out the trash-- at 11 pm, mind-- and yell, "it's blacker than my _soul_ outside!"
> 
> IM SO SORRY I LOVE DOGS
> 
> also i am moving to Richmond, VA probably at the end of the summer, so the ice cream and candy shop will no longer be my local confectionery shop. once we've moved and gotten settled, i'll provide the link, but that may or may not be the end of Kiddie, Wafer, Mint. sorry!! i think. it's really great-- definitely consider ordering stuff or stopping by if youre in the area.

**Author's Note:**

> Jobs:  
> Natasha, Clint: serving ice cream  
> Tony: Selling candy, occasionally serving ice cream  
> Thor, Steve: making ice cream  
> Fury: Proprietor, professional heckler  
> Phil: makes candy, administration  
> Sam: UPS delivery guy.  
> Jasper, Sharon, Maria: dry cleaners  
> Specialty Ice Cream Introduced:  
> Eve with a Lid: Apple pie ice cream. Vanilla base, with apple chunks and graham cracker crumbs mixed in. Served with an (optional) cup of caramel topping on the side if it's on a cone, or simply drizzled on top if it's in a cup. Steve's idea, because he is wholesome and good family fun.  
> S'moreo: Marshmallow base (Vanilla with so many marshmallows [it's a thing, it's possible, don't ask]) also mixed with graham cracker crumbs, chocolate chips, and Oreo pieces. [it's a best-selling specialty flavour.] Thor's idea, because it is very much a "more is more" sort of thing he's known for.


End file.
